Running wild
Tennis can sometimes feel like the most hierarchical of sports: with the world rankings and the seedings, everyone knows their place. To shake up the tennis establishment, you need wild cards.
Players like Russia's Liudmila Samsonova - because British teenager Emma Raducanu isn't the only woman with 'WC' beside her name to have made it through to the second week of The Championships.
Samsonova goes into her fourth round against Karolina Pliskova, the No.8 seed from the Czech Republic and a former world No.1, on a 10-match hot streak on Europe's grass courts, with seven of those wins coming in Berlin where she worked her way through qualifying and then landed her first title on the Tour. As a reward for her run in Germany, the 22-year-old was given a spot in the Wimbledon draw, with this her first appearance in the main draw.
Dazzling debuts
Bjorn Borg is part of this select Wimbledon group. John McEnroe and Nick Kyrgios, too. Since the Open era began in 1968, only 11 debutants have reached the quarter-finals of the gentlemen's singles, and none since Kyrgios in 2014. American Sebastian Korda and Belarusian Ilya Ivashka could join that select gang. And should Korda defeat Russia's Karen Khachanov and Ivashka also get past Italy's Matteo Berrettini, that would be a first: never before have two debutants made the last eight in the same summer.
Last Eight Club
Manic Monday might become Momentous Monday for Aryna Sabalenka. It's a startling statistic that the Belarusian, who is seeded No.2 at a Slam for the first time, is the only woman in the top 20 seeds in the ladies' singles who is yet to feature in a Grand Slam quarter-final.
That could all change for Sabalenka, who is through to the second week for the first time, where she plays Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. And if you're going to make your breakthrough, you might as well do it at Wimbledon where reaching the quarter-finals brings membership of the Last Eight Club, which is an actual club, with perks including tickets to West End shows (outside of pandemics) and Happy Hour drinks.
Impromptu party
It doesn't mention this in the information supplied by the International Tennis Federation, but Roberto Bautista Agut must be the only player in history to have held his stag weekend inside the gates of the All England Club. It was in 2019 that he booked a few days with his friends in Ibiza during the second week of The Championships, as he hadn't imagined that he would get as far as the semi-finals. So the friends, and the party, had to come to him. You can't imagine that the Spaniard is double-booked this summer. Victory over Denis Shapovalov, the Canadian who beat his idol Andy Murray in the previous round, would take him through to the quarter-finals once again.
Change of fortune
A month after making her first Grand Slam quarter-final at Roland-Garros, Paula Badosa is threatening to reach another. Until this summer, the Spaniard's involvement at Wimbledon had been a meagre first round defeat in Qualifying and an opening round loss in the main draw, but she is through to the last 16, where she meets Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic.
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